Agnes Yewande Smith Bowie Savage

Probably the first West African woman to qualify in medicine, Agnes was an outstanding student at Edinburgh. She obtained first class honours in all of her subjects, winning awards in skin disease, forensic medicine and receiving the prestigious Dorothy Gilfillan Memorial Prize for the best woman graduate in 1929.

 

Born in Edinburgh in 1906 to a Nigerian father and Scottish mother, Agnes faced huge institutional barriers – dictated both by race and sex – once she qualified. She later served as a junior medical officer in Ghana before establishing a nurses’ training school in Korle-Bu Hospital, where a ward was later named after her.

 

Agnes retired relatively early in 1947 but lived out the rest of her days in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where she died in 1964.

 

Agnes' father, Richard Akiwande Savage also attended Edinburgh Medical School and graduated in 1900. Her brother, Richard Gabriel Akiwande Savage graduated from Edinburgh Medical School in 1926 before becoming the first person of West African descent to be commissioned as an officer in the British army in the Second World War.